Chinese Medicine Times : Keeping You Informed

Blood Stasis(9780443101854)

ISBN: 9780443101854Publisher: Churchill LivingstoneBinding: Hardcover

by Gunter Neeb

With clear and comprehensive detail, this books covers the area of blood stasis in Traditional Chinese Medicine, drawing on a huge range of original Chinese material. Many Western diseases including diabetes, gynaecological disorders, stroke, tumours and myocardial infarction, and the interaction of these with other pathological factors are discussed, and the classical sources quoted. Differentiations and treatments, both Classical and modern, including both herbs and acupuncture, are provided in all categories, with case histories where appropriate and interesting.

Features:

Examination of the concepts and processes of blood stasis in TCM are unrivalled in detail

Draws on original translations from Chinese sources ranging from the classical era through to modern times

Describes in full the historical perspective of Chinese medicine’s presentation of blood stasis theory

Daryll Daley, Rated: 5

Recommended

I ordered this book solely based on its title. I was very surprised at how informative and well written it book is. It revealed how Blood Stasis is so often overlooked in diagnosis, but has involvement in so many patterns. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their ability in alleviating many of their clients' complaints and conditions.

Anonymous, Rated: 5

Hidden Classics

I bought this book “unseen” to assist with some coursework I was writing at the time (I’m a TCM student) and I’m generally very impressed. Gunter Neeb has had a number of books published in German and Chinese (his Chinese pseudonym is Nei Longdao) but this is, I think, the first one of his books to make it into English. Although I am eternally grateful to Messrs Maciocia, Flaws, Bensky, Wiseman et al for their pioneering work in making TCM understandable to Western students, it is always good to broaden the author base available to us for research and reference, especially with someone with as much experience as Gunter Neeb.

The book’s main section analyses the causes, signs & symptoms of blood stasis and looks at TCM syndrome differentiation in such instances. It also does a pretty good job of mapping Western disease names into TCM equivalents. There are a number of case studies by way of example, which always seem slightly contrived, but are, I guess, a good way of explaining and learning.

The latter part of the book is given over to blood stasis within TCM classical texts. There is a full translation of the yilin gaicuo by Wang Qingren (which came as a very pleasant surprise to me as this fact is not really advertised and probably negates the need for my intended purchase of Bob Flaw’s forthcoming version) and applicable chunks from other works (shanghan lun, jinkui yaolue...) which makes this book a very useful reference source.

On the down side, if you take out the classical texts, the book is only about 160 pages, less of a tome than I was expecting. Also, the Chinese to German to English translation does make for a few clunky sentences.

For me, this is an excellent publication, but I do have a love of the TCM classics. Those that are less enthused by such things may think it is not value for money. But it’s a “thumbs up” from me! Hopefully some of Herr Neeb’s German back catalogue may now follow into English.